Curious decision on Ubisoft's part. Uplay has a leg up on the Epic Store in pretty much every way imaginable, particularly in its years of managing scale. It's an all-in-one solution for payments, achievements, patch support, game giveaways, friends lists, and even its own “rewards” system. They're absolutely in a position to say "let's start claiming 100% of game sales, at the cost of losing Steam users and angering others."

Yet even Ubisoft doesn’t seem ready to concede the promotional boon gained from partnering with another storefront (or accepting a secret bag from Epic with a dollar sign logo painted on it).

Or maybe they're dipping their toes into the "we don't need Steam" pool, with only a single, highly promoted game, before doing something more extreme as more of their 2019 PC games launch. (Let alone Beyond Good & Evil 2, which could very well be a Uplay exclusive when it launches in approximately 27 years.)

Shouldn’t people choose the Store based on its ability to provide a quality experience instead of based on what exclusives it has available?

I understand the benefit of exclusives (especially in the console world), but Ubisoft is neglecting a large user base by skipping Steam. And it’s not like they’re doing it to push UPlay, so I’m curious about the decision and why they wouldn’t do a timed exclusive instead of complete abandonment of Steam.

This isn’t to say that Steam is perfect. This competition is going to make Steam better.

Personally, I don’t mind having multiple platforms on my Pc, so long as the software doesn’t get in my way or violate my privacy or safety.

As a game dev myself, who is considering the Epic (and discord) stores for my next game launch, this is good for the industry overall. It'd be better if they dropped uplay so we could use less launchers.

Ok, that's def. a trend. Steam is going to have to really up its game.

Steam upped their game long time ago. Steam provided different features that is unrivaled. You are comparing two different storefront that is not on the equal footing at all. Steam is miles and miles and miles ahead of other competitions and it is unfortunate that Devs/Publishers have not realize they are losing more than what they gain from other storefront in the name of profits.

Shouldn’t people choose the Store based on its ability to provide a quality experience instead of based on what exclusives it has available?

I understand the benefit of exclusives (especially in the console world), but Ubisoft is neglecting a large user base by skipping Steam. And it’s not like they’re doing it to push UPlay, so I’m curious about the decision and why they wouldn’t do a timed exclusive instead of complete abandonment of Steam.

This isn’t to say that Steam is perfect. This competition is going to make Steam better.

Personally, I don’t mind having multiple platforms on my Pc, so long as the software doesn’t get in my way or violate my privacy or safety.

Curious decision on Ubisoft's part. Uplay has a leg up on the Epic Store in pretty much every way imaginable, particularly in its years of managing scale. It's an all-in-one solution for payments, achievements, patch support, game giveaways, friends lists, and even its own “rewards” system. They're absolutely in a position to say "let's start claiming 100% of game sales, at the cost of losing Steam users and angering others."

Yet even Ubisoft doesn’t seem ready to concede the promotional boon gained from partnering with another storefront (or accepting a secret bag from Epic with a dollar sign logo painted on it).

Or maybe they're dipping their toes into the "we don't need Steam" pool, with only a single, highly promoted game, before doing something more extreme as more of their 2019 PC games launch. (Let alone Beyond Good & Evil 2, which could very well be a Uplay exclusive when it launches in approximately 27 years.)

1) People who would never see the game on UPlay2) People who refuse to install UPlay or buy games through it

Same reason they've cross-listed games on Steam thus far, only now they get a bigger cut for those non-UPlay players. Maybe BG&E2 is big enough to try for UPlay exclusivity, but I'm not sure...

Edit: It's also quite possible Epic is paying for the privilege of getting Division 2 for itself and not Steam. That could be very lucrative for Ubisoft and make up for reduced UPlay sales...

Edit 2: Don't underestimate the promotional power of getting in front of pretty much everyone who plays Fortnite on PC. That's a lot of people who would probably not be exposed to a UPlay exclusive version.

Ok, that's def. a trend. Steam is going to have to really up its game.

Steam upped their game long time ago. Steam provided different features that is unrivaled. You are comparing two different storefront that is not on the equal footing at all. Steam is miles and miles and miles ahead of other competitions and it is unfortunate that Devs/Publishers have not realize they are losing more than what they gain from other storefront in the name of profits.

We shall see.

- It's distance from competition is mostly user facing (I don't know what the differences in backend data available to developers are). Publisher/developer interests aren't exactly the same as what we customers want. That extra margin in the bank may be a big deal.- Don't underestimate newness (don't overestimate it either).- Neither underestimate intangible changes like options and public buzz invading the thinking of publishers and developers.- And also watch carefully for changes in thinking among the herd.

If Valve had been smarter, they'd have cut their fees quite awhile back. They should have been pricing low enough to make entering their market fairly unattractive.

Their per-sale overhead should be relatively low, since they're serving such a massive volume. Considering how few employees they have, and how much bulk bandwidth has dropped over time, I suspect their cost of goods sold is probably pennies per copy. At their scale, they really ought to be able to make more money than any Johnny-come-lately service.

The fact that so many companies are entering this market is a strong sign of a substantial mispricing for Steam services. These other companies clearly believe they can charge a much lower percentage and still make a profit.

If Epic can really make a good profit at 12%, then Valve blundered seriously in charging 30%.

Shouldn’t people choose the Store based on its ability to provide a quality experience instead of based on what exclusives it has available?

I understand the benefit of exclusives (especially in the console world), but Ubisoft is neglecting a large user base by skipping Steam. And it’s not like they’re doing it to push UPlay, so I’m curious about the decision and why they wouldn’t do a timed exclusive instead of complete abandonment of Steam.

This isn’t to say that Steam is perfect. This competition is going to make Steam better.

Personally, I don’t mind having multiple platforms on my Pc, so long as the software doesn’t get in my way or violate my privacy or safety.

If by "people" you mean "publishers" then... no, not really. This is a business, and if Steam is asking for 18 addition percent of every sale, the quality of the experience (and/or the reach of the potential audience) needs to be a LOT better to convince a big publisher to stay.

Ubisoft obviously thinks people will follow Division 2 to the new store, even without some of Steam's features. We'll see if that's accurate, but there's definitely reason to believe it is.

Curious decision on Ubisoft's part. Uplay has a leg up on the Epic Store in pretty much every way imaginable, particularly in its years of managing scale. It's an all-in-one solution for payments, achievements, patch support, game giveaways, friends lists, and even its own “rewards” system. They're absolutely in a position to say "let's start claiming 100% of game sales, at the cost of losing Steam users and angering others."

Yet even Ubisoft doesn’t seem ready to concede the promotional boon gained from partnering with another storefront (or accepting a secret bag from Epic with a dollar sign logo painted on it).

Or maybe they're dipping their toes into the "we don't need Steam" pool, with only a single, highly promoted game, before doing something more extreme as more of their 2019 PC games launch. (Let alone Beyond Good & Evil 2, which could very well be a Uplay exclusive when it launches in approximately 27 years.)

It’s not “Uplay launcher or Epic launcher”, it’s “Epic launcher and get Uplay inflicted anyway”. Also, Uplay has a well-deserved reputation for being utter garbage; I imagine plenty of people haven’t even figured out that Uplay has its own store.

Curious decision on Ubisoft's part. Uplay has a leg up on the Epic Store in pretty much every way imaginable, particularly in its years of managing scale. It's an all-in-one solution for payments, achievements, patch support, game giveaways, friends lists, and even its own “rewards” system. They're absolutely in a position to say "let's start claiming 100% of game sales, at the cost of losing Steam users and angering others."

Yet even Ubisoft doesn’t seem ready to concede the promotional boon gained from partnering with another storefront (or accepting a secret bag from Epic with a dollar sign logo painted on it).

Or maybe they're dipping their toes into the "we don't need Steam" pool, with only a single, highly promoted game, before doing something more extreme as more of their 2019 PC games launch. (Let alone Beyond Good & Evil 2, which could very well be a Uplay exclusive when it launches in approximately 27 years.)

That or they assume the fortnite audience will buy in. It's hard to say how big the pc audience is when fortnite plays on almost anything.

If Valve had been smarter, they'd have cut their fees quite awhile back. They should have been pricing low enough to make entering their market fairly unattractive.

Their per-sale overhead should be relatively low, since they're serving such a massive volume. Considering how few employees they have, and how much bulk bandwidth has dropped over time, I suspect their cost of goods sold is probably pennies per copy. They really ought to be able to make more money than any Johnny-come-lately service.

The fact that so many companies are entering this market is a strong sign of a substantial mispricing for Steam services. These other companies clearly believe they can charge a much lower percentage and still make a profit.

If Epic can really make a good profit at 12%, then Valve blundered seriously in charging 30%.

From Steam's point of view why would they lower it? They have no major competition and if one does emerge then they can lower their cut (or at least do secret deals with the major game companies). And everybody will laud them for their generosity.

If Valve had been smarter, they'd have cut their fees quite awhile back. They should have been pricing low enough to make entering their market fairly unattractive.

Their per-sale overhead should be relatively low, since they're serving such a massive volume. Considering how few employees they have, and how much bulk bandwidth has dropped over time, I suspect their cost of goods sold is probably pennies per copy. At their scale, they really ought to be able to make more money than any Johnny-come-lately service.

The fact that so many companies are entering this market is a strong sign of a substantial mispricing for Steam services. These other companies clearly believe they can charge a much lower percentage and still make a profit.

If Epic can really make a good profit at 12%, then Valve blundered seriously in charging 30%.

I strongly believe Valve could still be immensely profitable at 12%. But before very recently, there was no reason for them not to charge 30%, because they had such a dominant position and no one else really gave better revenue shares (niche platforms like itch.io excepted).

If just a few more big games start to ignore Steam I think Valve could lower its cut relatively soon.

Personally, I wish UPlay didn't have such a bad rep. In no particular order, here's what I love about it:

-Achievements give you uplay points, that you can spend for bonus items in games. usually cosmetics or the game's soundtrack. Like Far Cry 5. If you have Rainbow Six Siege and 20 uplay points (1 achievement), you can unlock a special R6 style outfit for your character. -Play while you download. Many games have a core download need, but if late game assets are the thing left to download, it will allow you to play while you download the rest of the game. Huge boon to those with slow downloads.-Using Uplay points for coupons. Those same achievement points above can net you actual money savings!

I dunno, I do really like ubisoft games. And their store is actually rather good. I won't buy Division 2 on Epic's game store, I refuse to use it simply because I don't want another store. I've already got 4 of them barking at me (Steam, Origin, Uplay, Battle.net).

Shouldn’t people choose the Store based on its ability to provide a quality experience instead of based on what exclusives it has available?

I understand the benefit of exclusives (especially in the console world), but Ubisoft is neglecting a large user base by skipping Steam. And it’s not like they’re doing it to push UPlay, so I’m curious about the decision and why they wouldn’t do a timed exclusive instead of complete abandonment of Steam.

This isn’t to say that Steam is perfect. This competition is going to make Steam better.

Personally, I don’t mind having multiple platforms on my Pc, so long as the software doesn’t get in my way or violate my privacy or safety.

If by "people" you mean "publishers" then... no, not really. This is a business, and if Steam is asking for 18 addition percent of every sale, the quality of the experience (and/or the reach of the potential audience) needs to be a LOT better to convince a big publisher to stay.

Ubisoft obviously thinks people will follow Division 2 to the new store, even without some of Steam's features. We'll see if that's accurate, but there's definitely reason to believe it is.

I'm not exactly a hardcore gamer, but I don't like the idea of even having to deal with Steam to get a game. Typically, I get a game, then launch it through the shortcut the game installs, and then drive an e-stake through Steam's heart until the next time I decide I should get a new game and see what they have. I generally like to run with as little background stuff going as possible.

I treat them more like Amazon - a place to go to shop for a game. EVERYTHING ELSE is moot to me and I don't feel any loss by not delving deeper into their ecosystem.

I don't expect this is typical for most folks, but I've never really seen the point to the other stuff Steam does besides offer games where you have the same tools for connecting in-game (or through other means) as you have via Steam.

Epic Games has to be paying for this exclusivity. It makes no sense to not integrate with Steam and sell it on there if you're putting it on a 3rd party launcher when you already have your own fairly mature one.

I'm curious to see how it'll pan out for them. They're aiming for the younger generation of Fortnite gamers to carry the sales...

Curious decision on Ubisoft's part. Uplay has a leg up on the Epic Store in pretty much every way imaginable, particularly in its years of managing scale. It's an all-in-one solution for payments, achievements, patch support, game giveaways, friends lists, and even its own “rewards” system. They're absolutely in a position to say "let's start claiming 100% of game sales, at the cost of losing Steam users and angering others."

Yet even Ubisoft doesn’t seem ready to concede the promotional boon gained from partnering with another storefront (or accepting a secret bag from Epic with a dollar sign logo painted on it).

Or maybe they're dipping their toes into the "we don't need Steam" pool, with only a single, highly promoted game, before doing something more extreme as more of their 2019 PC games launch. (Let alone Beyond Good & Evil 2, which could very well be a Uplay exclusive when it launches in approximately 27 years.)

I'm confused why I would buy this from Epic, rather than directly from Uplay if I were interested in the game. The reason I buy games on Steam over in house options whenever possible, is Family Sharing. Does Epic offer this or are they just hoping to peel off some Fortnite players?

I love gaming, but the more complicated game purchases get, the less I care about them. I can’t see what’s improved for the consumer buying from Epic over Steam. Especially if licenses are locked to platforms. MSFT is happy to lock you into Xbox and same with Sony, but buy the same game from steam for PC and you can port that license over.

Just like TV streaming, everyone is making their own money grab. Too many products watered down by “exclusives”. I’m certainly not going to buy into a platform based on exclusives if it means I’m “locked in” whether that’s for TV or games.

Personally, I wish UPlay didn't have such a bad rep. In no particular order, here's what I love about it:

-Achievements give you uplay points, that you can spend for bonus items in games. usually cosmetics or the game's soundtrack. Like Far Cry 5. If you have Rainbow Six Siege and 20 uplay points (1 achievement), you can unlock a special R6 style outfit for your character. -Play while you download. Many games have a core download need, but if late game assets are the thing left to download, it will allow you to play while you download the rest of the game. Huge boon to those with slow downloads.-Using Uplay points for coupons. Those same achievement points above can net you actual money savings!

I used to hate uplay, and am still annoyed that you need to have administrator privileges in order to login to the store (though you can at least revert to a standard user after logging in). But yeah, the "play while you download" feature is cool.

Quote:

I dunno, I do really like ubisoft games. And their store is actually rather good. I won't buy Division 2 on Epic's game store, I refuse to use it simply because I don't want another store. I've already got 4 of them barking at me (Steam, Origin, Uplay, Battle.net).

Shouldn’t people choose the Store based on its ability to provide a quality experience instead of based on what exclusives it has available?

I understand the benefit of exclusives (especially in the console world), but Ubisoft is neglecting a large user base by skipping Steam. And it’s not like they’re doing it to push UPlay, so I’m curious about the decision and why they wouldn’t do a timed exclusive instead of complete abandonment of Steam.

This isn’t to say that Steam is perfect. This competition is going to make Steam better.

Personally, I don’t mind having multiple platforms on my Pc, so long as the software doesn’t get in my way or violate my privacy or safety.

If by "people" you mean "publishers" then... no, not really. This is a business, and if Steam is asking for 18 addition percent of every sale, the quality of the experience (and/or the reach of the potential audience) needs to be a LOT better to convince a big publisher to stay.

Ubisoft obviously thinks people will follow Division 2 to the new store, even without some of Steam's features. We'll see if that's accurate, but there's definitely reason to believe it is.

I meant gamers/customers. I totally agree that the publisher perspective is much different.

The publishers do need to concern themselves with what their customers are comfortable with and enjoy using. If customers don’t flock to the Epic Games Store Or Uplay for Division 2 they’ve risked losing a lot of money, even if Ubi had to pay the high fees on Steam.

Curious decision on Ubisoft's part. Uplay has a leg up on the Epic Store in pretty much every way imaginable, particularly in its years of managing scale. It's an all-in-one solution for payments, achievements, patch support, game giveaways, friends lists, and even its own “rewards” system. They're absolutely in a position to say "let's start claiming 100% of game sales, at the cost of losing Steam users and angering others."

Yet even Ubisoft doesn’t seem ready to concede the promotional boon gained from partnering with another storefront (or accepting a secret bag from Epic with a dollar sign logo painted on it).

Or maybe they're dipping their toes into the "we don't need Steam" pool, with only a single, highly promoted game, before doing something more extreme as more of their 2019 PC games launch. (Let alone Beyond Good & Evil 2, which could very well be a Uplay exclusive when it launches in approximately 27 years.)

I suspect part of it is to leverage negotiations on pie splitting with steam. Does not seem like they want to go solo, but if they can demonstrate this other store provides similar value for less money, it potentially puts steam in the position to take a smaller cut in the future for Ubisoft games, if they want them.

Personally, I wish UPlay didn't have such a bad rep. In no particular order, here's what I love about it:

-Achievements give you uplay points, that you can spend for bonus items in games. usually cosmetics or the game's soundtrack. Like Far Cry 5. If you have Rainbow Six Siege and 20 uplay points (1 achievement), you can unlock a special R6 style outfit for your character. -Play while you download. Many games have a core download need, but if late game assets are the thing left to download, it will allow you to play while you download the rest of the game. Huge boon to those with slow downloads.-Using Uplay points for coupons. Those same achievement points above can net you actual money savings!

I dunno, I do really like ubisoft games. And their store is actually rather good. I won't buy Division 2 on Epic's game store, I refuse to use it simply because I don't want another store. I've already got 4 of them barking at me (Steam, Origin, Uplay, Battle.net).

Uplay has been updated so that now, when I launch a Steam game, it displays the splash screen, loads Uplay, navigates to the game’s page and.....doesn’t launch the game. That’s so tiresome that I have actually bought Ubisoft games on PS4 specifically in order to avoid putting up with Uplay altogether.

If Valve had been smarter, they'd have cut their fees quite awhile back. They should have been pricing low enough to make entering their market fairly unattractive.

Their per-sale overhead should be relatively low, since they're serving such a massive volume. Considering how few employees they have, and how much bulk bandwidth has dropped over time, I suspect their cost of goods sold is probably pennies per copy. They really ought to be able to make more money than any Johnny-come-lately service.

The fact that so many companies are entering this market is a strong sign of a substantial mispricing for Steam services. These other companies clearly believe they can charge a much lower percentage and still make a profit.

If Epic can really make a good profit at 12%, then Valve blundered seriously in charging 30%.

From Steam's point of view why would they lower it? They have no major competition and if one does emerge then they can lower their cut (or at least do secret deals with the major game companies). And everybody will laud them for their generosity.

Why would they lower it? To prevent competitors from starting up. The barriers to entry in their market aren't very high, so they wanted to make climbing those barriers look financially unattractive.

Not extracting all the rent you can out of an accidental monopoly (as opposed to a natural one, like, say, cable modem service) means that you're much more likely to keep that monopoly. If Steam had dropped their percentages to, say, 20% around 2010, and then to 10% somewhere around 2016, would they have any competitors now? Probably not. Nobody would bother trying to jump into that market, so they could extract their 10% in peace and quiet.

Instead, right now, they're getting thirty, but they're missing a lot of games. All the major studios have competitors. (Origin, UPlay, and Battle.net, for EA, Activision, and UBISoft.) And now they've got Epic, too, who's going after all their indies.

There is nothing that will mess up your business model more than competition. They got complacent, and before too long, they may be wishing very hard that they'd gone for that hypothetical 10% of the entire gaming market.

I don't expect this is typical for most folks, but I've never really seen the point to the other stuff Steam does besides offer games where you have the same tools for connecting in-game (or through other means) as you have via Steam.

Big Picture Mode is a nice-to-have feature that I really enjoy. I am more of a console gamer and I play my Pc games on my living room TV. Big Picture Mode gives me a console-like experience for playing my games. Sure, it’s just a pretty launcher, but it’s support for controllers and the UI/UX makes it fun and simple to launch and switch games similar to digital games on a console.

I dunno, I do really like ubisoft games. And their store is actually rather good. I won't buy Division 2 on Epic's game store, I refuse to use it simply because I don't want another store. I've already got 4 of them barking at me (Steam, Origin, Uplay, Battle.net).

Which is why I always select the option to not launch with windows.

I usually let Steam auto launch because that's where 99% of my games area (and thus needed updates). I launch Epic (Fortnite, but StW, not BR), Origin, Uplay, Battle.Net separately when I want to check for updates. There is also Star Citizen's launcher, but since it's for a single game and only handles patching the game - I'm not too bent out of shape about that.

I do have to say that the only store front I typically actually browse is Steam's.

maybe they are banking on people getting it directly on uplay with steam out of the picture, (and avoid the hassle of 2nd or rather 3rd store) getting the benefit of eyeballs of epic user and getting presumably some sort of incentive from epic.

presumably also gambling that people won't not buy things because it's not on steam.

As much as I like having all my games in one place and dislike hopping between launchers, it’s an inconvenience I’m willing to tolerate if it means developers can get a larger cut of sales. If Epic can do 88/12, there’s no reason Valve can’t, and I’ll gladly reward the people who make the content I actually care about – as opposed to rewarding Valve for simply providing a place where all that content lives.